A truth that disheartens because it is true is of more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods.
– Maurice Maeterlinck
All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing.
– Maurice Maeterlinck
An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.
– Maurice Maeterlinck
Do we not all spend the greater part of our lives under the shadow of an event that has not yet come to pass?
– Maurice Maeterlinck
It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.
– Maurice Maeterlinck
Many a happiness in life, as many a disaster, can be due to chance, but the peace within us can never be governed by chance.
– Maurice Maeterlinck
Our reason may prove what it will: our reason is only a feeble ray that has issued from Nature.
– Maurice Maeterlinck
Remember that happiness is as contagious as gloom. It should be the first duty of those who are happy to let others know of their gladness.
– Maurice Maeterlinck
They believe that nothing will happen because they have closed their doors.
– Maurice Maeterlinck
We are never the same with others as when we are alone. We are different, even when we are in the dark with them.
– Maurice Maeterlinck
We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet: and, amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us.
– Maurice Maeterlinck
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
– Maurice Maeterlinck
We possess only the happiness we are able to understand.
– Maurice Maeterlinck
Happiness is rarely absent it is we that know not of its presence.
– Maurice Maeterlinck
At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past.